Tempered Wild
by Stalking Severus Snape
Summary: A Willowgreen/Greywolf story. I would be grateful to any who stopped to read and review this. I promise it won't take too much time. :)


"Tempered Wild"  
A story of Willowgreen and Greywolf.  
  
By Ami E. Bowen aka Skayda  
  
Willowgreen shoved a lock of pale yellow hair out of her equally pale and delicate face with an impatient gesture. Her back bent with the task to crushing moss with bark and oilberry root to a pulp in large wooden bowl in lap, the daystar beat down upon her unmericifuly and sweat dripped into her eyes.  
It didn't help matters that the cub within her belly was letting her know that he was less than content at the moment and regal Rellah, her healer-teacher, stood over her, arms crossed and critizing every move she made with her biting High One thoughts.  
Somewhere in the distance, perhaps hidden by the forest, she could sense Greywolf watching, sulking about like a moody youngster, as was often his wont to do.  
Uncomfortable with the elves....and more at home with the wolves...the strange 'wolf-boy'  
stayed away from the others as much as possible.  
Willowgreen thought of Two-Spear, her lifemate, and still found it hard to believe that it had been Greywolf who had recognized her, that the cub she carried was not Two-Spear's no matter that was the story she had been telling.  
Greywolf had found it equally difficult to accept Willowgreen, one of the 'others' who had always hated and mistrusted him, as 'mate'. But, as much as he longed to hate her, to feel envious of her place in the tribe, the feral elf found that he could not. She was a part of him now, and as much as he hated it, he loved it.   
Now, he could not even go near her.   
And it drove him crazy.  
Willowgreen heard Greywolf's thoughts as if they were her own and shivered involuntarily, silently wishing that things could have been altered, that they did not have to keep her cub's origins a secret....that they could be together....  
Rellah noticed the young woman's attention was diverted and followed Willowgreen's gaze to the darkened forest.  
A cruel smile split the older elf's lips and she sent, **Hmm...why do you waste your thoughts on him, healer....he will never amount to anything...animal as he is.**  
She spat the word 'animal' out like it were rotten meat.  
Willowgreen turned on her, leaping up and spilling the contents of the bowl on the ground, "He is more loyal than you and your posion-berried thoughts, Rellah."  
Rellah opened her mouth to retort back, saw Willowgreen's green eyes narrow in warning and looked away instead.  
"Finish your task, healer," Rellah mumbled and made her way towards the caves, murmering something about needing to speak with Talon about a new root she had found.  
Watching her go, Willowgreen sat down hard on the forest floor, her heart thudding in her chest, and her head light.  
Never had she spoken so to Rellah...to anyone higher in the tribe than herself...and the outcome excited her in ways she could not discribe.  
Timid as a newgreen bud, the wolves had always frightened her, and, though she longed to embrace their ways, the elves intimidaited her.  
She had always fancied herself elf blooded with no wolf. The bonding between her and Windwalker changed that. The tall wolf made her see herself as other than a 'useless cry-in-the-night' as Two-Spear so often called her.  
She knew now that the wolf-blood ran in her viens as wildly as in the Hunt and she had found a measure of peace in that knowledge.   
**Greywolf!** She sent, even though she knew it was pointless, that he could pick her thoughts right out the air sent or not, **Come here, please.**  
Her excitement caused her to sharpen her thoughts and she felt Greywolf wince.   
Sorry, beloved....She thought, and waited.  
  
***  
  
He watched her and Rellah working on something in the clearing. His keen senses told him it was another of her foul-smelling...foul-tasting medicines.  
Wrinkling his nose in disgust, Greywolf crouched down in the brush, shoving aside a stray branch with one hand.  
he heard Willowgreen's thoughts and echoed her yearning. His soul cried out in agony to be with her and wondered, for the uptenth time, just what in Timmorn's name he thought he was doing, watching her and torchuring himself so.  
But as much as he longed to flee into the darkness of the everwood, to lose himself in the familair wildness...he had just as strong a desire to stay near the pale frail healer, to protect her and the cub she bore from harm.  
His amber eyes narrowed and a growl escaped his throat as Rellah's sent-thought echoed up to him...and he found that he could not find cause to disagree...that he was, indeed, an animal...and would possibly amount to no more than that.  
He watched with interest as Willowgreen sprang up and for a moment Greywolf thought she might strike the proud elf-woman down. A snarl of a smile spread across his face at that image.  
But Willowgreen merely defended him verbally and Greywolf silently cursed her. No one was soppose to know they hadn't ceased hating each other....with her defending him against Rellah's biting blind attacks the tribe was certain to become suspisitious....and then Two-Spear may start to doubt Willowgreen and Greywolf....discovering the cub wasn't really his own....  
Greywolf shuddered to think what that would bring to the tribe....and to his chief-cousin.  
Willowgreen glared slotted-eyed at Rellah and the older turned and swiftling made her away towards the elves' dwelling caves.  
Greywolf sighed and waited for Willowgreen's silent call...aware that she had known of his presence for awhile now.  
It came in the form of an ice-hard, stinging mindtouch....which she apologized for and softened her tone at once...aware as no one else how sensitive he was to the telepathy that was to the elves like second-nature.  
She called him forth with mocking regalness....and he bit back a laugh at that....Willowgreen making fun of the elves...and climbed down the steep untamed path towards her waiting slender form.  
  
***  
  
He took her hand in his own and led her wordlessly into the overgrown forest, her thoughts flowing into his mind like quicksilver, as her hand held tightly, warmly, to his own. It was the only way they could be together.....secretly......  
  
***  
  
"Why don't you come to the gathering tonight?" She asked him, hours later, when they lay embracing each other under the faint glow of a receding sun through the treetops upon Willowgreen's earth-hued cloak, "The tribe needs you."  
Greywolf sat up and reached for his fur vest, sniffing the air and smelling a stray longtooth in the distance....not near enough to be any threat, so he ignored it. Instead he turned to Willowgreen and said, harshly, even though he did not mean it to come out that way, "The tribe doesn't need me at the gathering, Willowgreen....I'm only useful to them in the white-cold times....when food is scarse and my hunting keeps them fed....no...I...."  
She halted his words with a few of her own, reaching out to place a four-fingered hand on his shoulder, "Alright....I need you...to be near....you know what happened at the last gathering....Two-Spear grows more and more careless....the wolfsong howling during gatherings spreads across his blood and heats it....he begins to believe he is immortal....and plans again to battle the humans away from the forest...."  
She paused and thought, It is you and you alone who can halt his rages, Greywolf...without you....we would all be dead by now.  
He shook off her warmth as if it were a mudsnake....and turned away...but he heeded her words and silently promised to be at the gathering that moonsrise.......  
Willowgreen smiled even though her heart ached each time she saw him flinch away from her, as if even recognition could not ease the fear he felt in her elfish presence...as if she would reject him and mock him......She sighed and allowed her love for him to leak from her thoughts as best she could.  
  
Moments later she watched him flee into the forest like the wild-thing he was....and would always be...  
  
***  
  
"Treebark ran around the rope...and..." Willowgreen smiled at the tow-headed child who spoke to her in halting gasps, her high pitched tone excited and happy as she recounted an adventure shared between herself and the shyly grinning dark haired boy behind her.  
The moons were round and full, each bearing a ring of misty light, the ground beneath her was soft and yeilding and grassy....the fire in the pit blazed steady and warm, the gray plumes of cloud reaching the heavens.   
She breathed in the ruddy scents of the world around her, her long, tapered ears swiveled about to catch the slightest sound even as she sat still, smiling dreamily up at the youngling speaking so dramatically to her.  
She was aware of the other elves....young ones with wolfblood mingling in their viens...their thoughts wild, loyal, and altogether caring....the old ones....with no wolf blood at all....tame in thought and speach....wild in their fear of the wolf blooded.  
Each loyal to it's own.  
Willowgreen frowned a moment....her enjoyment of the bright, star-filled evening disrupted by the thought-patterns of those around her.   
Carefully....she pulled her mental sheilds up around her mind, blocking off the rattle and hue of other's unsent thoughts.  
She turned suddenly at a noise behind her. Greywolf. He would have to be wandering the forests again, remembered about the gathering and Willowgreen....and approached....  
Willowgreen smiled, knowing he was deliberately making noise so that she would hear him. Greywolf could silent as death when he wanted to be.  
He called it a 'knack'.  
**Beloved....*** She reached into his mind gently....almost timidly....aware of the tempestuous emotions that could hurl her into blackness if she did not tread with care, **It is I....***  
Almost at once a surge of fear overwhelmed her....with her mental barriers in check, she had missed it before...but now, linked as she was with Greywolf.....she felt it...hard...like a sudden harsh blow to the guts.  
She gasped and doubled over in pain....wondering, somewhere in the back of her mind, why no one else felt it....  
The child was looking down at her...frowning and begining to reach out to her. Willowgreen sprang to her feet, not wanting the cub to touch her and possibly absorb the terror her beloved was sending out.  
Unable to stop a cry of pain from escaping her lips, Willowgreen stumbled from the clearing and dove into the thick forest.  
She stumbled onward....finally falling to the ground, holding her head between her hands...her green eyes rolled back in her skull as darkness claimed her.  
  
Her wolf-friend found her almost at once, reaching her with her mind and using that to locate her body.  
He licked her cheek as she lay still on the forest floor. He whined and sent a desprate thought to his friend's mate....  
  
**Willowgreen-friend...hurt....**  
  
***  
Greywolf lifted his head. He had not meant for Willowgreen to come to harm. Sometimes the strength of his own roiling emotions halted even he. He had been afraid to come into the circle....afraid of the strange magic of the...others....and had unwillingly projected that fear into Willowgreen's waiting mind.   
He had scensed her fleeing.....crying out in pain...pain...he had caused.  
He sank down into the brush and held his head on his upraised knees....intending to block out his frantic thoughts....help Willowgreen somehow.....He cursed himself into the five-fingers midst for what he did.....his fists clenched at his sides.....Greywolf nearly wept with the frustration.....could he do no good?  
***  
  
He stood up swiftly at the wolf's mental call....growling low in his throat....he would not allow more harm to befall his beloved.  
With the grace born of years in the forest, Greywolf tracked Willowgreen by her scent and the residual traces of her mind.  
  
At last he spotted the tall wolf....Windwalker...bent over the still form of the healer's body, whining and bathing her face with his long, damp tongue.  
At Greywolf's sharp bark, the wolf gave way and allowed the elf to approach.  
  
"Willowgreen...?" Greywolf asked, reaching out to touch her pale shoulder. She was cold....so cold...."Willowgreen!"  
  
As much as he loathed the feel of going mind to mind....he didn't seem to have much choice....he was no healer....but maybe....just maybe he could reach Willowgreen enough for her to heal herself.....  
  
***Tyrr!** He tumbled past her weakened barriers.....sending her soulname out to her on a wave of love, hope, and fear.....**Beloved....let me help you....as you helped me....remember....?**  
He shared with her the memories he held of her leaning over him....the pain of his broken ribs....her reaching....searching....through his mind.....him fending her off...afraid of her odd elfness.....afraid of her reaction to his....beastness......and at last....allowing her access to his inner self....his completeness.....to her healing.  
He strained himself to the limit showing her these things....as she had once done for him....he showed her the world through his amber-hued eyes....how hated he was by the elves like Rellah and Talon.....how he feared magic....how he loved the wildness of the wolves and the honesty of the forest.....he showed her his gift for hearing the leaking, unsent, thoughts of others....a gift he claimed to be a curse......  
Then....gently....he reminded her of the cub nestled in her womb....waiting.....growing....depending upon her.....  
  
With a gasp Willowgreen sat up, heart pound, her green eyes unseeing.   
**Vrenn?** She sent, like a frightened child....she reached out....touching his fur vest and pulling him to her....**It....was...so dark....and....**  
Before she could finish the thought....a new kind of darkness claimed her.  
Greywolf, still mindlinked to her, felt her plunge into blackness and nearly joined her. But, realizing that it was only sleep which claimed her, struggled to bring himself back.   
Through the doorway which was his self, he dove....suddenly aware of the world around him....and looked down at the frail healer....who now slept peacefully.....and was out of danger of losing her mind to the darkness beyond his reach....  
Greywolf swore never to allow that to happen again.   
He must never overwhelm her again.  
He snarled and turned back to Willowgreen, lifting her in his strong arms....her slight form weighing no more than a breeze, and carried her to the holt and the cave she shared with Two-Spear.  
"What happened?" His chief asked as he lay the slumbering healer on the bedfurs.  
Two-Spear glanced at his lifemate with no more feeling than he would a broken bow....it made Greywolf seethe....  
"She was outside....playing games with the cubs...she felll....and hit her head...I brought her here." Greywolf said, tasting the lie like sour squatberry root across his tongue, "I thought....since she was your mate and the tribe's healer...that she should be well cared for here...."  
Two-Spear looked at Willowgreen once more...his blue eyes going momentarly soft, and he whispered..."I don't like her to overtax herself....being with my cub and all..."  
  
My cub....Greywolf silently spat at him. As much as he loved him....there were times when Greywolf yearned to rip out his chief's thoat.....My mate....  
  
Two-Spear turned again to him. Greywolf lost his snarl and smiled instead....."You did good, my friend..." Two-Spear told him, "Thank you...."  
  
Greywolf shrugged and retreated out of the den.  
  
***  
Willowgreen shivered, her body awakening to the chill air. She opened her eyes enough to view the blue of the sky outside the cave.   
Turning her head, she saw Two-Spear huddled, fur-wrapped, in the corner of the cave, and sighed.   
No wonder I woke up cold....She thought, shaking her head and slipping her soft leather shoes over her feet. She had something that needed doing and she wasn't about to let Two-Spear's half-mad, blind-caring protectiveness stop her from doing it.  
She tied the laces up her legs and reached for her fur-lined jacket, she would not need it come sun-high, but it was cold enough for it now.  
She paused before leaving, watching her lifemate's steady breathing as he slept. She knew he wouldn't be awake untill sun-goes-down.  
  
She climbed the steep path, sending to the one-eared wolf known as Windwalker to join her.   
Windwalker met her at the nearest clearing, uncertain at to what she was doing up and about when most elves were asleep.  
  
"Shhh...silly wolf..." She whispered as he leaned down far enough for her to hawl herself and her cub-weight onto his back, "You'll know soon enough..."  
  
Windwalker sighed in wolf-form and straightened. Willowgreen placed an image into the animal's mind.   
  
***  
Willowgreen rode in silence, the slight tingle in the back of her mind had begun to trickle down her body until she began to feel the first stirrings of birth-pain.   
She focused her mind on calming her fear, and easing the pain through her healing magic.   
She sent mother-love images in the form of emotions to her unborn child, soothing it's fear as best she could.   
She had known she was about to drop the cub as soon as she woke in the cave, shivering with cold.   
Windwalker carried her to the darkest part of the everwood, leaned down for her to slide away from him, and watched her through ice-blue eyes.  
  
A wave of pain she was too slow to intercept gushed though her and in that instant she focused her mind on her beloved's.  
  
**Vrenn!** She sent, shoving his soul-name to him on a crimson-wave of the kind of agony only mothers could know, **Vrenn!**  
  
She fell onto her knees and struggled to keep from blacking out. She forced her magic to work harder....  
Windwalker whined near her and licked her hands.   
  
"...Sssilly...wolf..." She hissed through her clenched teeth, "'M...all...riiightt..."  
  
***  
  
Greywolf sat up and blinked the sleep from his mind....  
Tyrr! He thought, and sniffed the air around him....no blood-smell...no hunt-prey animals about....  
Puzzled as to why she would sent out such a thought, he made his way to her, following on the wake of her projected emotions.  
He was almost upon her when her scented it.   
Milk-scent...cub-scent....  
  
"Willowgreen..." He whispered as he knelt beside her, taking her hand in his own, "...The cub?"  
  
"Is coming..." She said, her throat constricting, her green eyes sparkling with the light that was her magic and Greywolf knew she was using it to ward off the worst of the pain, "I...came...needed...to be with you...."  
  
All at once anger flooded him, and he dropped her hand. Standing, he turned away from her.  
  
"...Grey...?" She started, but he spun on her to swift for her have forseen, fangs beared in a snarl of bearly contained rage. She flinched away from the heat of that rage....  
  
"Are you insane, Willowgreen?" He asked her, low and deadly, "You could have been hurt...worse...killed...do you...think...I want to see you...or the cub...my cub...come to harm?"  
Every word was uttered slow and on a current of fear. Willowgreen merely stared at him, unable to say anything.  
Finally, drained of his own fear-turned-anger, he dropped down next to her.   
"What can I do to help?" He asked her at last.   
She smiled up at him, "Should I make a list?" She gasped, and watched his eyes widen, roll back in an uncharacterically elfin gesture and shake his head in amusement at her.  
**Get ready...'wolf-boy'...** She sent, **Your about to become a father...**  
  
****  
  
Hours later, Willowgreen was feeding the newly born child from her milk-weighted breast, sighing wearily as she leaned her back against the rough bark of a tree.   
Greywolf sat next to them, seemingly content to sit and gaze with awe at the tiny being he had helped create.  
"We must bring her into the tribe, Greywolf..." She said, knowing it was something he did not want to do...He wanted to keep both cub and mother to himself, "She needs to be seen and aknowledged by all...I won't name her untill then."  
  
Greywolf nodded, having seen the feirce stubborness in his love's eyes before, and helped her to her feet.  
  
***  
"Her soulname rang through my entire being as she was born..." She told the gathered elves around her and child swathed in her cloak in her arms, "Strong and feirce...gentle and caring....she is like music to my soul....I have named her Willowsong and that is what she shall be called."  
  
A cheer went up from those gathered and Two-Spear stepped forward to take the infant into his arms, "Welcome...the newest member of our family..."  
He held her high into the air, as was the rite, for all to see. Willowgreen's heart lunged into her throat at the look of pure love and awe she saw flicker across the chief's gaze as he brought little Willowsong back down and placed her into Willowgreen's waiting arms.  
  
Willowgreen watched the trees, aware of Greywolf watching her...and the cub they shared...and hurting.....  
  
She sent an image to him....one of happiness...togetherness....and somedays.....  
  
They made a promise to meet again soon.....  
  
She felt him fade into the distance, knowing she would be with him soon, and turned her smile towards her chief-lifemate.   
Willowsong howled in fury and waved her tiny fists in the air.   
They all laughed as Willowgreen turned crimson and raced into the cave to finish the feeding.  
Content with her place in the world for the first time in a long time.  
  
**End**  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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